If you're the type of person who likes spending time beneath the Earth's surface in the murky depths of an underwater cave, then chances are you're not necessarily going to enjoy the international media spotlight.

Key points:

Thai cave rescuers Richard Harris and Craig Challen want to use their fame to inspire others

The pair were named Australian of the Year joint winners

They admit their chosen passion can be dangerous, but believe the rewards are greater

By their own admission, both have had to slowly adjust to their newfound fame.

"It's still quite a remarkable feeling and nobody is more surprised than me to consider the success of the whole thing and find myself here," Dr Challen told ABC Radio this morning.

"It does seem a bit surreal," Dr Harris added.

"Part of the reason I think is because we were completely exhausted for the entire time we were in the cave so our actual memory of the events is starting to be reinforced by what we're seeing on the TV."

The Thai cave rescue was a formidable challenge and neither Dr Harris, an anaesthetist, nor Dr Challen, a retired vet, believed it was likely to succeed.

"I totally thought we were going to end up with some, if not all, casualties out of this and I was highly pessimistic," Dr Challen said.

"The only reason we undertook it was because there was no alternative. If we'd left them in there, it was [leaving them] to certain and probably slow and lingering death."

Dr Harris was "even more pessimistic", and said the prospect of the rescue team being held accountable if the mission failed added to the pressure they were already under.

"The Department of Foreign Affairs people on the ground said to me before we started the first day of rescue, 'look, we do need to warn you if this goes bad you could end up in the Thai judicial system and we haven't managed to get you diplomatic immunity'," he said.

"I'm not so naive to think that we would be in any way the heroes people make us out to be if there'd been a bad outcome for those kids.

"It will sound fairly harsh, the reason that I could deal with this in my own mind was that I thought if these kids do drown, at least they'll be asleep when it happens."